American grand strategy and the islamic wars

There is one more element of the American dynamic that we must cover: the grand strategy that drives American foreign policy. The American response to 9/11 seemed to make no sense, and on the surface it didn’t. It looked chaotic and it looked random, but underneath, it was to be expected. When one steps back and takes stock, the seemingly random actions of the United States actually make a good deal of sense.

Grand strategy starts where policy making ends. Let’s assume for a moment that Franklin Roosevelt had not run for a third term in 1940. Would 39 e a rthqu a k e

Japan and Germany have behaved differently? Could the United States have acquiesced to Japanese domination of the western Pacific? Would the United States have accepted the defeat of Britain and its fleet at German hands? The details might have changed, but it is hard to imagine the United States not getting into the war or the war not ending in an Allied victory. A thousand details might have changed, but the broadest outlines of this conflict as determined by grand strategy would have remained the same.

Could there have been an American strategy during the Cold War other than containment of the Soviet Union? The United States couldn’t invade Eastern Europe. The Soviet army was simply too large and too strong. On the other hand, the United States couldn’t allow the Soviet Union to seize Western Europe because if the Soviet Union controlled Western Europe’s industrial plant, it would overwhelm the United States in the long run. Containment was not an optional policy; it was the only possible American response to the Soviet Union.

All nations have grand strategies, though this does not mean all nations can achieve their strategic goals. Lithuania’s goal is to be free of foreign occupation. But its economy, demography, and geography make it unlikely that Lithuania will ever achieve its goal more than occasionally and temporarily. The United States, unlike most other countries in the world, has achieved most of its strategic goals, which I will outline in a moment. Its economy and society are both geared toward this effort.

A country’s grand strategy is so deeply embedded in that nation’s DNA, and appears so natural and obvious, that politicians and generals are not always aware of it. Their logic is so constrained by it that it is an almost unconscious reality. But from a geopolitical perspective, both the grand strategy of a country and the logic driving a country’s leaders become obvious.

Grand strategy is not always about war. It is about all of the processes that constitute national power. But in the case of the United States, perhaps more than for other countries, grand strategy is about war, and the interaction between war and economic life. The United States is, historically, a warlike country.

The United States has been at war for about 10 percent of its existence. This statistic includes only major wars—the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Viet40 t h e n e x t 1 0 0 yea r s

nam. It does not include minor conflicts like the Spanish- American War or Desert Storm. During the twentieth century, the United States was at war 15 percent of the time. In the second half of the twentieth century, it was at war 22 percent of the time. And since the beginning of the twenty- first century, in 2001, the United States has been constantly at war. War is central to the American experience, and its frequency is constantly increasing. It is built into American culture and deeply rooted in American geopolitics. Its purpose must be clearly understood.

America was born out of war and has continued to fight to this day at an ever increasing pace. Norway’s grand strategy might be more about economics than warfare, but U.S. strategic goals, and U.S. grand strategy, originate in fear. The same is true of many nations. Rome did not set out to conquer the world. It set out to defend itself, and in the course of that effort it became an empire. The United States would have been quite content at first not to have been attacked and defeated by the British, as it was in the War of 1812. Each fear, however, once alleviated, creates new vulnerabilities and new fears. Nations are driven by fear of losing what they have. Consider the following in terms of this fear.

The United States has five geopolitical goals that drive its grand strategy. Note that these goals increase in magnitude, ambition, and difficulty as you go down the list.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14